The Glass Key (1942)

THE GLASS KEY       C                    

USA  (85 mi)  1942  d:  Stuart Heisler

You’re built well, got a pretty face, nice manners, but I wouldn’t trust you outside of this room.      —Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd)

Not to be confused with the earlier version of this film The Glass Key (1935) starring George Raft and Edward Arnold, adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, considered one of his best, this remake stars Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, the second of four films together, adding a love interest that was not in the earlier version.  Made immediately after THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), but prior to the release, where Paramount saw how well the diminutive pair worked together, as Ladd was all of 5 feet and 5 inches tall, while Lake was just under 5 feet, making them perfect screen partners.  The secret to their screen chemistry, however, is the dialogue, as it’s smart and sassy, giving Lake a chance to exert a fierce independent streak, making her an ideal femme fatale, quite demure and emotionally distant in her calculatingly cold and indifferent way.  Directed by Stuart Heisler, who also directed the politically subversive Among the Living (1941), this remake is often thought to be the superior of the two versions, where the crisp dialogue might be sharper and quick-witted, and the extension of Lake’s role in the story doesn’t hurt, but George Raft is better as the slick and street smart Ed Beaumont, a man of dubious character, whose conversion from gambler to political handler is more believable.  Ladd appears kind of wooden for much of the film, especially when he’s working the right side of the law, as he’s more animated playing a tough, wise guy who knows how to talk to and handle small time hoods.  He’s at home in their seedy element, where some of the best scenes in the film are shared with William Bendix as Jeff, a near psychotic hit man who loves to smash people’s faces for a living, used as a bodyguard for gambling operator Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia).  No one can beat the largesse of Edward Arnold’s earlier performance either as Paul Madvig, a corrupt political boss trying to go straight.  He and Raft were excellent partners who seemed to be speaking the same language, as if they came out of the gutter together.  Ladd as Beaumont and Brian Donlevy as Madvig, who actually had top billing in the picture, act like they barely know each other, as Madvig exerts much less influence, so one wonders why Beaumont would be so loyal.

Perhaps more faithful to the book, it’s a complex story of political corruption and murder, where Madvig and Beaumont come from a crooked past supporting prostitution and gambling interests.  So when party boss Madvig comes out in support of a reform candidate for Governor, society millionaire Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen), believing he’ll be rewarded with a key to the Governor’s mansion, his fashion-minded daughter Janet (Lake) is the real object of his desire, making her his fiancé, so he starts shutting down gangster run gambling houses, like Nick Varna’s, which turns heads, and infuriorates Varna who vows revenge.  When Henry’s troubled son is murdered, Madvig is quickly implicated, fueled by rumors fed to the newspaper by Varna.  But when Madvig doesn’t seem very concerned, Beaumont is initially puzzled, as he doesn’t trust Henry and thinks Janet is playing his boss for a chump, thinking both will be dumped after the election.  Pretending to get in a fight with Madvig and leave town, Beaumont has another reason to stick around, as Veronica Lake captures his interest as well The Glass Key Film Noir Veronica Lake 1942 YouTube (2:33).  When he starts sticking his nose in Varna’s affairs, Beaumont runs into Jeff, who’s just waiting to get his mitts on him, giving him one of the more brutal beatings that’s still painful to watch more than a half century later, especially when one learns afterwards that Bendix accidentally knocked Ladd out, catching him with a haymaker to the jaw, which is the take used in the film.  Bendix was so remorseful afterwards that he and Ladd became excellent friends, working together again in The Blue Dahlia (1946), another tour-de-force performance from Bendix.  Wally Westmore’s makeup department deserves special recognition, as Ladd really looked like he was on the wrong end of a crudely savage beating, yet he cleverly manages to escape.

After a hospital recovery, Beaumont engineers what is perhaps the most morally despicable scene in the film, but it starts out like one of those Inspector Hercule Poirot scenes in an Agatha Christie novel, where he gathers all the usual suspects in a room and figures it all out.  Beaumont reveals that Varda owns the mortgage to the newspaper, so the publisher, Arthur Loft as Clyde Matthews, is forced to print all the rumor and gossip as actual news, which the publisher’s wife Eloise (Margaret Hayes) finds a detestable development, especially the realization that they’re broke.  When she and Beaumont cozy up to one another in plain view of the husband, brazenly kissing on the sofa, Beaumont literally shames the publisher into taking his own life.  Beaumont’s actions here are pretty disgusting, where his heartless and amoral reaction may be suitable for film noir, but hardly befitting anyone’s idea of a hero, which is how he’s projected in the film.  Again, George Raft projects having lived among sewer rats so much better than Ladd who always looks like he’s afraid to get his shoes scuffed, as he just doesn’t exhibit the needed range of believability.  There’s a fascinating appearance by Lillian Randolph, Annie the housekeeper in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, whose daughter Barbara sang with the Platters and was initially considered as a replacement member of the Supremes), seen here as a Bessie Smith style nightclub blues singer where the publisher’s widow is seen drowning her sorrows.  Bendix, though, steals the movie when Ladd comes to get revenge, shown here with his mouth flapping and his hair flying, continually calling Beaumont a heel, He's A Heel - The Glass Key (1942) YouTube (3:34).  Ladd doesn’t stop there, urging the spineless District Attorney to bring charges against Janet Henry, a woman he supposedly loves, to root out the real killer.  The film barely touches on the corrupt political angle, using it instead as background information for the budding romance between the two leads, where each projects an unscrupulous nature that all but defines them as untrustworthy.  By the end, do we really believe that they’re going to go straight?  She’s accustomed to the finer things in life, having been spoiled and raised with servants in an immense mansion.  Beaumont’s going to need plenty of bucks to keep her happy, where life on the shady side of the street is often more financially rewarding.   

Detour (1945)

DETOUR                  B+                   

USA  (68 mi)  1945  d:  Edgar G. Ulmer

Did you ever want to forget anything? Did you ever want to cut away a piece of your memory or blot it out?  You can’t, you know. No matter how hard you try. You can change the scenery, but sooner or later you’ll get a whiff of perfume or somebody will say a certain phrase or maybe hum something. Then you’re licked again!                    

—Al Roberts (Tom Neal)

While the IMDb catalog lists 52 films directed from 1930 to the mid 1960’s, director Edgar G. Ulmer worked on closer to 127 features, starting his career in Germany as a set designer for early Fritz Lang films of the 20’s and 30’s including METROPOLIS (1927) and M (1931), also F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927), before emigrating to Hollywood in 1931 and making a name for himself in America by directing THE BLACK CAT (1934), an atmospheric horror film adapted from an Edgar Allen Poe tale starring both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.  But of all the films he directed, only DETOUR was chosen to the National Film Registry, the first B-movie to be chosen, as it carries the distinct imprint of the post war, German Expressionist style mixed with the bleak fatalism of an American film noir.  Supposedly shot in a week for less than $20,000, a road movie with no location shots, this lighting and production design is remarkably inventive in a morality tale of an unlovable loser stuck in a nightmarish, Kafkaesque world, featuring a down-on-his-luck loner, Al Roberts (Tom Neal), the victim of bad luck and trouble and an ill-fated future, paralyzed by the poisonous venom from the Queen Bee villainess, Vera (Ann Savage), a mysterious hitchhiker whose cold-blooded, in-your-face, blackmailing technique overwhelms him and keeps him stymied throughout the film, suffocating him with her sting, toying with his guilt and paranoiac delusions, unable to claw his way out of her web.  A mere 68 minutes, the film reflects an era of utility and purpose, where nothing extraneous is added to this taut psychological thriller, something unheard of today, as they would add plenty of character development.  Not so in this film, which in an uninterrupted shot shows the open road stretching out to the horizon through the opening credits, where the camera is distancing itself from the road left behind. 

Using an overly morose inner narration throughout, Al is a jazz pianist down in the dumps and seen hitching across the country from New York to Hollywood, broke and hungry, with little to show for himself, hoping to unite with his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake), a pick up singer last seen when both were literally immersed in a fog bank.  A brief flashback sequence shows an amusing quality that is interestingly used later in The Blue Dahlia (1946), where the sound of American jazz music is a sign for mental agitation (recall William Bendix screaming “Turn off that monkey music!”), as emotional and psychological scars have obviously left their mark as Al screams to shut it off when someone plays a song on the jukebox that recalls better times, Detour (1945) - Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me - YouTube  (1:50), suggesting a happier world and a better life that he remains exiled from in the present.  This device was also used in CASABLANCA (1942) when nightclub owner Rick forbids Sam the piano player from playing a certain song.  Among the more brilliant scenes are the nightclub sequences, which include Al playing solo piano, performing ultra-theatrical versions of Chopin and Brahms waltzes, odd choices in a jazz club which add a hyper realistic but out of synch view of the world as seen through his eyes.  What’s also interesting is the frequent use of Ulmer playing an orchestral reprise of the song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,” which suggests Al has already cut himself off from reality and is chasing a pipe dream.  The mood quickly changes when Al is picked up by a bookie on his way to Los Angeles, Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald), a guy on a mission to reverse his own luck but dies mysteriously in the car, where Al in a panic assumes his identity, thinking no one would believe he died naturally and would suspect the worst, claiming his cash, his clothes, and his car, hoping to ditch the car once he gets to Los Angeles.  But incredibly he picks up another hitchhiker along the way, Vera, who immediately accuses him of murdering Haskell, as she was riding with him earlier and recognizes Haskell’s clothes and car.  Again in a spot, backed into a corner, Al succumbs to all of Vera’s demands, where she takes all the money and plots to sell the car, continually threatening to expose him to the police if he doesn’t do as she says. 

As a B-movie, the clarity of image is lacking, the soundtrack has a noticeable hiss throughout, and the razor-sharp dialogue at times resembles screwball comedy with the frenetic pace, where the dialogue is not always in synch with the actors and at times has such an amusing, overly hard-edged, noirish language to it that it feels as if Al and Vera are talking in code.  Their tough guy, stone-faced approach to one another, filtered through the extra layer of haze caused by excessive alcohol, creates a kind of dysfunctional paralysis, where neither one of them makes a bit of sense and instead exposes viciousness and raw desperation, where her overly aggressive stance keeps him cornered, even though any reasonable person would simply walk away at any number of opportunities, but he remains ensnared by the very nature of her deviousness.  The contrast between the two is markedly different, as is the contrast between the two women, where Al and Sue are both viewed as innocent and naïve next to the willfully crass amorality of Vera, nonetheless, the world closes in on them both with a dizzying claustrophobic hysteria.  Audiences must love hating Vera, as she’s so over the top, one of the more evil and diabolic femme fatales who fittingly gets what she deserves, which only ends up tightening the noose around his neck, casting him out into the world chasing shadows, where behind every dark corner is someone searching after him.  The entire film is saturated in layers of guilt and self-loathing, where Al is seen as such a weak, miserable wretch that no good can come to him, where he will forever wander the streets aimlessly like a ghost stripped of his worldly existence, where a wrong turn somewhere distanced him from ever having a future, leaving him instead lost, eternally wandering the wasteland.  As fatalistic a film as you’re ever going to find, perhaps the biggest irony is what actually happened to actor Tom Neal, a former boxer, who was ostracized from the Hollywood community in the early 50’s for his hair trigger temper, alcoholism, and history of physical assault, eventually charged with the murder of his own wife.  After serving his sentence, he died of a heart attack less than a year following his release.  

The Blue Dahlia

THE BLUE DAHLIA               B                     

USA  (96 mi)  1946  d:  George Marshall

Bourbon straight with a bourbon chaser.       —Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix)

You've got the wrong lipstick on, Mister.       —Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd)

It’s funny, but practically all the people I know were strangers when I met them.     

—Joyce Harwood (Veronica Lake)

Like all the modern day era directors named Marshall, George Marshall was primarily a comic director before making this film, where he serves in a functional role, little more than moving the right pieces around, but hardly visionary or exemplary, where screenwriter Raymond Chandler may have actually directed several of the scenes.  This film is noted as being the only original Raymond Chandler script in Hollywood, though several of his books have been adapted, where the script was unfinished when filming began and production was about to be shut down as he developed writer’s block.  Already a hurried production, as actor Alan Ladd was being recalled for military service, so the terms Chandler demanded to finish the script on time was to start drinking again, as he felt he wrote better under the influence, also an in-home round the clock nurse to help moderate his alcohol intake, so as an alcoholic he wouldn’t drink himself into a stupor, and a car which drove his finished pages to the studio every day.  John Houseman, from the Orson Welles Mercury Theater group, was the producer on the Paramount film and he felt inclined to agree to these outlandish terms, offering in addition a $5000 incentive to finish on time, which he did, as otherwise everyone would simply be fired.  This is also the third of four films where Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake would work together.  While the two of them were never close, the diminutive Ladd at 5' 5” enjoyed working with her as she was just under 5 feet tall, and this is one of their better efforts.  The snappy and crisp Chandler dialogue, which was the film’s only Academy Award nomination, works to their benefit, as they have some terrific lines together, always keeping one another at arm’s length, but just barely.  After Lake died, it was revealed by her husband, director André de Toth, that she was a heroin addict and an alcoholic during her starring roles at Paramount, earning $4500 a week, which is why they never renewed her contract, eventually working as a barmaid near the end of her life, drifting from one cheap hotel to the next, where she had frequent arrests for public drunkenness. 

Like many of the war pictures in its day, the film opens with out of uniform soldiers returning home to Los Angeles on a bus, where they experienced a close camaraderie of serving together, but become anonymous figures upon returning home.  Alan Ladd as Johnny Morrison definitely fits that bill, even though he has a wife to come home to, while the other two, William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont, are envious.  But when Ladd arrives, his house has been taken over by a drunken crowd of perpetual party revelers, led by his wife, Doris Dowling, who is on the arm of a crooked nightclub owner Eddie Harwood, Howard Da Silva, whose career was blacklisted for the decade of the 1950's.  Da Silva, Dowling, and Frank Faylen (a small-time hood) all just finished working together on Billy Wilder’s THE LOST WEEKEND (1945).  Dowling is from the theatrical school of bold dramatic expressions, wearing lavish and spectacular gowns that might feel more appropriate in a highly decorative Josef von Sternberg film.  Her stand-offish behavior towards Johnny, not to mention being caught in a kiss with Harwood, sends Johnny back out the door, where in typical noirish fashion it has become an evening downpour of rain.  With all the hotels booked, he’s aimlessly roaming the streets, suitcase in hand, until a car pulls up and offers him a shelter from the storm, driven by Veronica Lake.  While exploring the entire Los Angeles vicinity together, from Hollywood, Santa Monica, to Malibu, they immediately hit it off, but with vague sarcasm and clever comebacks.  They are easily the glue that holds this picture together, but keep getting separated after a news report announces the murder of his wife, where Johnny is the lead suspect, spending the rest of the film on the run while the police are searching for him, leaving him little choice except to find the killer himself. 

While some of this does in fact resemble Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SLEEP (1946), another Chandler novel with Bogart and Bacall which may have borrowed liberally from this film, especially the scenes where the hero gets double crossed, beaten up and captured in an out of the way location, the claims that Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961) and the Coen Brother’s MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) also drew wholesale from this film are less obvious, as Ladd is hardly in a position trying to keep two warring sides at bay and instead is a returning war hero who has to reestablish his heroicism back here on American soil.  While not officially a detective, Ladd is placed in the position of being a detective in having to solve the crime before the police make an arrest.  In this respect, the film has more in common with THE THIN MAN (1934), where the non-explicit, bordering on dysfunctional relationship between Ladd and Lake is a stark contrast to the cozy marital bliss of William Powell and Myrna Loy, who represent the security, peace and prosperity of the pre-War years.  After the war, a man’s got to settle his own affairs with little or no help, where Bendix returns with a serious war injury, with a metal plate placed in his head, where he is constantly growing mentally agitated at the least provocation, especially the sound of American jazz music, which causes headaches and mysterious blackouts, continually demanding that people “Turn off that monkey music!”  Bendix was Chandler’s inadvertent killer in the initial script, where in noir films a character suffering from temporary amnesia is as familiar as the common cold, and everything leads up to his odd yet plausible police confession, which was unacceptable by the U.S. Navy, refusing to allow the depiction of a wounded war veteran as the damaged killer in a high profile Hollywood production coming so close to the end of the war.  The Navy threatened to refuse to cooperate in any future Paramount production, causing a hastily altered Raymond Chandler rewrite, which is really just a stab in the dark and the film’s weakest link.  Like the much publicized OJ Simpson murder case which captivated all of Los Angeles for months, there were really no other suspects.